‘Fast Company,’ Carla Ching’s Tale of Grift

Fast Company From left, Stephanie Hsu, Mia Katigbak and Christopher Larkin in this Carla Ching comedy about grifters, at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Clinton.

Gerry Goodstein

By ALEXIS SOLOSKI

March 25, 2014

Carla Ching’s “Fast Company,” at the Ensemble Studio Theater, offers a crafty take on the dysfunctional-family tale. The Kwan siblings manipulate, deceive and forsake one another. But it’s all for the good of the family business. That business? Con artistry.

Hard-working, intelligent, and ambitious, Blue (Stephanie Hsu) is the Asian-American clan’s black sheep. Years ago, her stepmother, Mable (Mia Katigbak), announced that Blue would never make it as a grifter. Undaunted, Blue runs scams on the sly even as she works toward her undergraduate degree, confident that course work in game theory will help her achieve bigger and better scores. But when a con involving a million-dollar comic book goes calamitously wrong, she must call on her stepbrother, Francis, and Mable to keep the cops at bay.

Ms. Ching has a great gift for dreaming up elaborate plots, though rather less success in unspooling them. There are crosses, double-crosses and schemes devious enough to impress the most jaded flimflammer. But just when a scene gets going, cheap-insult slinging or dry exposition stops it cold again.

The theater commissioned “Fast Company” with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which underwrites projects meant to improve the public understanding of science. Ms. Ching seems determined to give the foundation its money’s worth, pausing to explain every aspect of game theory that the play exploits. In the midst of charged dialogue, characters pause to define “brinkmanship” or “credibility of threat,” as if footnoting the conversation. Urgency is eroded.

The director, Robert Ross Parker, tries to hurry things along. A veteran of Vampire Cowboys’ intensely kinetic theater, Mr. Parker favors broad, energetic strokes, which keep the pacing swift but sometimes threaten to push the characters toward caricature. And that’s a shame, because the play provides rich roles for its actors. Ms. Hsu is gutsy and adorable, and Christopher Larkin does fine work as her stepbrother, who traded long cons for a different kind of hustle: David Blaine-esque endurance stunts.

You can hardly blame Mable. In the world of “Fast Company,” as one character remarks: “A grifter’s always grifting. And a gambler’s always gambling.” To show tenderness is to admit weakness. If you’re not the shark, you’re the chump, maybe even the chum.

Yet Ms. Ching reveals the real affection that these characters feel for one another, even as they lie, cheat and steal with skill and avidity. Here, the family that cons together, belongs together.